BANGALORE: When Natarajan Rayar finished his degree in mechanical engineering, way back in 1992, he chose to do what is still unfashionable: starting a business in his own village. He was from Irumbulikurichi, a quaint little village in Tamil Nadu, 60 km south of Trichy, as remote and secluded as it could get in the southern state. He started an edible oil business quickly, but his mind was ticking even as he watched the business grow. All around him in the state were cassava processing plants that were energy-intensive, water-intensive, and polluting. With over 800 functioning units, cassava-processing was a big business in Tamil Nadu. Could he make them more economical and environmentfriendly? By 1998, he had developed a machine that uses substantially less water and less energy, but he needed money to commercialise it. He got his break in 2006, when he got a Rs 5.45 lakh grant from the department of science and technology (DST) to apply for a patent. Last year, he got an award of Rs 5 lakh for the best commercialisable patent.

On budget day, Finance Minister P Chidambaram announced a special Rs 200-crore fund to scale up inventions like Rayar's grinding machine. He has closed his edible oil business and is now operating a 20-tonne-per-day cassava-processing plant, and is all set to take his invention to the market. "It takes Rs 50-60 lakh of investment to set up a commercial plant," says Rayar.

When Chidambaram announced the new fund in his speech, he also mentioned that the government had identified, with the help of DST and the office of the Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister, several 'amazing inventions' that needed to be funded for scale-up. He meant inventions like that of Rayar, and a few others that have impressed DST officials.

Other candidates for funding include an infrared breast-cancer diagnostics device from a defence lab, a technique for recharging ground water efficiently, a method of optimising energy use in foundries, and a basket of technologies from the Grassroots Technological Innovation Acquisition Fund, run by Indian Institute of Management professor Anil Gupta.

Villages of India are teeming with innovations that go unnoticed, as many of them fall by the wayside through lack of funding. Anil Gupta's fund, for example, has about 70 inventions ready for commercialisation. The techpedia contest for engineering students, run by Gupta's Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI), comes up with thousands of new projects every year.

Most of them will not be eligible for funding in the current situation as they are earlystage technologies, not yet ready for scaleup. Those that are ready for scale-up have now a range of funding options available. "Money for scale-up is a very good thing," says Gupta. "But we miss 95% of the innovations if we invest only in the last stage." A quick glance at the later stage technologies would give a hint at the immense potential of village-level innovation.

Consider one from Anil Gupta's basket. Sabu Varghese is a small farmer in Kerala with five acres of land that grows rubber, cardamom, clove and other spices. One day he noticed that one of his cardamom plants looked different. He grew this plant separately and produced 250 seedlings from it through vegetative reproduction. It is now a drought-resistant, with long shoots and abundant foliage. It took him ten years of work to develop this variety, which has higher oil content and can tolerate higher temperatures as well. Babu has won several awards for his work, including from the Kerala Spice Board, but his invention has gone only as far as a nursery that he runs himself. "We can now grow cardamom among rubber plantations," says Varghese, "and this variety gives more oil for export".

Rayar's grinding machine provides even higher potential for export. Cassava processing is one of Tamil Nadu's significant industries as a significant portion of the starch produced is used for export, as it is used by the paper, food and textile industries.

However, the cassava processing units operate inefficiently; every tonne of cassava needs 12,000 litres of water, which is also often let out into the open ground without treatment. Rayar's invention killed multiple birds at one stroke. It reduced the need for water to 1,000 litres. It reduced the size of the processing plant substantially. It also reduced the need for energy. "It can be a breakthrough invention for the food processing industry," says Mukesh Mathur, scientist at DST: "because no one uses dry grinding in their factories." Chidambaram's list contains a few innovations directed by government institutions as well. One candidate could be an infrared diagnostic device jointly developed by the Delhi-based Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS) and the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS). Breast cancer screening is expensive because mammograms are done using X-rays. The INMASDIPAS device uses infrared rays and produces what is called a thermogram, instead of the mammogram produced by x-rays.

Says W Selvamurthy, who retired last week as chief controller of R&D in the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO): "An infrared device can be used as an inexpensive screening device for breast cancer in villages." Thermograms provide hints of abnormality, which can then be verified through mammograms if necessary.

The office of the Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister has a small budget to help rural industries to improve their technology. It has funded the development of energyefficient technologies for foundries in Howrah.

It has helped villagers in Uttarkhand to build gravitational ropeways - which can be used to take some weight up the mountains without an energy source - that can be used by village-folk to take back unsold goods from lower-altitude towns.

It has also helped them find a way to recharge ground water in specific places for maximum effect.

All of these technologies are ready for commercialisation. A Rs 200-crore fund is a small beginning for rural India innovations.